This ambitious series, projected to reach as many as a dozen volumes, will inquire into the way freedom, as it is generally understood in the modern world, came into being in a small part of the West and then was realized elsewhere across the world.

Modern freedom has been some four centuries in the making, but its history has never been traced on a broad scale. In the late nineteenth century, the British historian Lord Acton promised such a history, but never wrote it, and today the vast canvas that is required to do the subject justice is beyond the capacity of any single historian, however learned. The authors in this collaborative enterprise believe that, however incompleted and tentative this series must be for all its scope